This invention relates generally to apparatus for recompacting, slicing and stacking hay bales into high density compact units.
In the packaging of baled hay for international shipment, it is become commonplace to recompact the hay bales for efficient and economical handling and shipping. As further described, for example, in U.S. Pat. No. 5,001,974, conventional hay bales weighing about 50 kg. (110 pounds) are compressed to about half their field length.
In order to make the recompacted bales easier to handle manually, the recompacted bales can be passed through a cutting means to sever it into two uniform size and weight bales suitable for handling, shipping, and manual handling at the destination. The above-referenced patent describes the use of a double-edged knife blade mounted for vertical reciprocal movement in vertical guides, to cut each recompacted bale along a vertical plane. As an alternative to this method, I have previously built and used what I refer to as a box knife. The box knife has a chamber that is mounted at about a 30.degree. angle from horizontal; a fixed knife blade mounted across the chamber adds the same 30.degree. angle and positioned at about 20.degree. angle from perpendicular to the length of the chamber. A hydraulic ram mounted at one end of the chamber presses each recompacted bale, which is dropped into the chamber in such a way that its straps are oriented parallel to the knife, i.e., at about 30.degree. from horizontal, and pressed through the box knife to slice the bales in half.
An alternative approach to hay recompression is described in my U.S. Pat. No. 5,392,591, which describes enclosing the recompacted bale in an elastomeric net, rather than securing it with straps, and cutting the bale in half at various positions in the recompaction process.
To facilitate shipping, the recompacted bales are assembled into stacks of various sizes, consisting of K-N-M rows, columns and layers of bales. Conventionally, the bales have been stacked manually and thereafter handled by a squeeze truck and then wrapped or strapped into a unit so that the stack can be easily handled either by a squeeze truck or lift truck during loading into and unloading from a shipping container. Manual stacking is very hard work and time consuming but attempts to automate the stacking process have also encountered difficulty. One difficulty is that the half-cut bales do not stack easily, particularly if they have been cut on a vertical plane.
Simpson Equipment Company has previously marketed a box knife-type bale cutter consisting of an elongated chamber with a plunger in one end and a knife blade fixed across the opposite end in the middle of the chamber, the chamber having a hopper for receiving compressed hale bales between the plunger and the fixed knife. This type of bale cutting device was oriented with its sides at about a 45.degree. angle to the horizontal and vertical planes and the knife fixed at about 45.degree. from vertical. The half-cut compressed bales are then conventionally hand stacked and the stacks are preferably unitized for easy handling by a lift truck or squeeze truck, as is known in the art, and then loaded into a shipping container.
Once the shipping container reaches its destination, the stacks of half-cut compressed bales are unloaded and trucked to a feedlot or dairy farm where the half-cut hale bales are removed from the stack and fed to livestock. Handling of the half-cut bales is often done by hand, which is very difficult work even for half-cut bales.
Accordingly, a need remains for ways to improve the efficiency of processing compressed hale bales, cutting and stacking them and handling them when they reach the end user.